


look back, and smile at perils past

by Stacicity



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Westworld, Artificial Intelligence, M/M, Mystery, The Westworld AU that nobody needed but I'm writing anyway
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:21:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27668789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stacicity/pseuds/Stacicity
Summary: The use of host technology, the first iterations of which were trademarked and patented in 1953 by Lucien Bennett, has revolutionised Artificial Intelligence as we understand it. For now, most hosts remain safely at the Magnus Institute, a fully-immersive “theme-world” in which guests are invited to step into 19th century London and explore a mystery of paranormal proportions.***Jonathan Sims is seconded from the press department to archive and explore the findings of the highly-secretive Project Delos, taking him deep into the labyrinthine plotlines of the Magnus Institute, and the secrets lying within it.
Comments: 28
Kudos: 30





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Started rewatching season 1 of Westworld yesterday and was absolutely slapped in the face with this idea, so take this. I don't think you need to have watched Westworld to take this in, I'll throw in as much context as I can but if you're worried about spoiling yourself it might be worth keeping in mind!
> 
> Similarly, because this is a Westworld AU of The Magnus Archives, please be aware that there will be horror elements and violence - anything specific will be warned for at the start of each chapter, and if I miss something please do let me know!

“Alright. Bring yourself online.”

* * *

_The use of host technology, the first iterations of which were trademarked and patented in 1953 by Lucien Bennett, has revolutionised Artificial Intelligence as we understand it. The shockingly realistic hosts have been described as aberrations and attempts at “playing God”, as miracles, as the next iterations of humanity as we understand it. Potential uses for hosts have been posited: imagine a world in which transportation staff never need sleep, in which the elderly are cared for by indefatigable and ever-caring robots—so lifelike that they are scarcely distinguishable from humans at all. As host technology grows ever more advanced, science has suggested that they may be invaluable for medical trials, and the military has explored the possibility of host armies._

_For now, most hosts remain safely at the Magnus Institute, a fully-immersive “theme-world” in which guests are invited to step into 19th century London and explore a mystery of paranormal proportions. The hosts act as guides, friends, antagonists—and, indeed, lovers. Or perhaps ‘victims’ might be a more apt term, since guests are encouraged to enact their more hedonistic desires within the confines of the park, safe in the knowledge that the hosts are unable to hurt them in any way._

_The ethics of host technology are still the subject of hotly-contested debate, especially as the technology used to power their neural pathways and emotional responses progresses. There are those that feel that hosts are all-but human now and, if allowed outside of their behavioural ‘loops’, might even have a place as productive, free individuals within society today._

_“We welcome the interest in the technology we use for our hosts, and its potential applications in the modern world; our hosts are the beating heart of what we do here,” said Director of the Magnus Institute, Mr Elias Bouchard, appearing at the Future Tech Conference in Zhangjiajie in 2014. “However, safety must always be our paramount concern, and we wouldn’t dream of licensing any use of host technology outside of the confines of the Institute until we could be entirely sure that it was safe, sustainable, and in the best interests of society as a whole.”_

* * *

“You’re the new bloke, then?”

Jon looked up from his desk, blinking at the man in the doorway. Tall, black, handsome, wearing a riotously colourful shirt that he was quite certain was _not_ up to the dress-code. Not that anybody seemed to enforce the dress-code down here.

“Well—in a manner of speaking,” he replied hesitantly. “I’ve worked at the Institute for three years. But in the press department, not, er. Down here.”

“Not used to the boots on the ground work, gotcha. I’m Tim.” Tim stepped into his office to extend a hand and Jon stood to shake it. “Tim Stoker. I work—well, _worked_ —in the storylines department.”

“Jonathan Sims. Er—Jon, please. So you dreamed up all of the mysteries, then?” Jon asked, amused, and Tim grinned.

“The core story’s been around longer than either of us, I just add some fresh colour to it every once in a while. New characters, new quirks, stuff to make sure that the guests don’t get bored. Some of them have been coming here for _years_ , you know.”

“Yes, so I’ve heard. And you’ve been, er—seconded as well?”

“That’s right. I’ll be honest, I’m not really sure why, but I reckon Louise was glad to see the back of me and my storylines.”

“Really? Why?”

Tim shrugged, putting his hands into his pockets. “Apparently I’m too keen on the _mushy stuff_ , as she calls it. Too much character, too much _backstory_ and not enough plot. I think the backstory is what makes the whole thing worth doing, personally, but I get it. Some people just want to come in and dig up bodies or summon demons or whatever. They’re not interested in Clara’s childhood.”

“Clara?”

“Clara von Closen, yeah. She’s one of the hosts. Married to Albrecht. She’s got a few interesting plots, actually, there’s a storyline where she ends up with Kempthorne investigating the Buried, and another where she gets caught up in the Spiral, but honestly, she’s in the park for the same reason as Albrecht—there was going to be a Schwartzwald expansion to flesh out some of the locations outside of London, but it never ended up fully-written. No need to waste a perfectly good host, though, so we’ve put her in. I like her. She’s sharp.”

“Ah.”

Tim paused, grinning and tilting his head at Jon. “Sorry. Bit full-on for your first day down here, I know. Are you—have you even seen the park?”

“No. I mean, not outside of the press pictures. They don’t tend to let us just wander around down there, and shockingly I never scraped together the money for a visit. Not that I really see the point,” Jon muttered, sitting back down at his desk.

“Not one of the converted, then?” Tim leaned his hip against Jon’s desk. “I thought it was a prerequisite that everyone down here had to be fully on-board with the wonders of host technology.”

“Well, the _technology_ is interesting, of course, but I just-” Jon shrugged, looking down at his desk to line up the three fountain pens sitting there. Why had they given him _pens?_ Everything was done on tablets, but each desk seemed to come with fountain pens regardless. Excessive. “I’ve never understood the experience. It’s like, er. LARPing? With more horror and more texture? Honestly, I’d rather just read a book.”

“It’s a bit more than that,” Tim scoffed, and Jon shook his head.

“I’m not trying to offend you, I’m just saying it’s—it’s not for me. That’s all.”

“Oh, no offence taken. Maybe we’ll get you into the park and change your mind at some point. In the _meantime_ , what is it we’re supposed to be doing here?”

Jon sighed, reaching for the tablet. “They gave me a file. It’s some sort of heavily-redacted project. Apparently it’s been running for the last thirty years or so, but they don’t tell anyone much about it.”

“Just the two of us?”

“No, there’s—actually, good point. There should be a couple more of us, other people to assist. Sasha James and Martin Blackwood, if I remember correctly, and if you can shed some light on who either of them are-” Jon trailed off pointedly, looking up at Tim who rocked forward onto the balls of his feet, then back onto his heels, nodding slowly.

“Sash works in Programming, she’s been here about a decade. She’s brilliant. Started as a code monkey but nowadays she gets pulled in when they need something big doing, like an entire change of character loops overnight or an update’s gone wrong and badly corrupted some files. Martin….name doesn’t ring a bell. Whoever he is, he hasn’t been here long.”

“Right. Well, if you can find the two of them, we can get the paperwork done. There’s NDA’s I think we have to sign, and then I’ll try and brief you on the shape of this.”

“Mmhm. Scale of one to ten, how weird is it?”

“Seven? Seven and a half?”

“Could be worse!” Tim grinned, firing off a little mock-salute as he sauntered out of Jon’s office. “I’ll bring them back when I find them.”

* * *

_ Project Delos: Briefing Notes _

  * _Project Delos originated in 1993 under the direction of Gertrude Robinson, who was seconded from the Quality Assurance division by the then Director, James Wright.  
_
  * _It was a preliminary investigation into the potential usage of hosts outside of the park as replacements for human workers in a variety of settings.  
  
_
  * _Hosts were guided through simulations of various environments and activities with a focus on autonomous action, improvisatory speech, and the removal of core code such as the embargo against harm to any non-host (relevant for military settings in particular).  
  
_
  * _As part of this work, a large number of ‘statements’ were taken from hosts detailing their experiences in archived memory files for the entirety of the park’s tenure, used to test their memory retention and any emotional or psychological changes as a result of these experiences.  
  
_
  * _These experiences were hypothesised to have deep and far-reaching effects on the host ‘subconscious’ once released from the loop function. Hosts developed symptoms of trauma as a result of their experiences, and a predisposition towards violence as a form of catharsis, and revenge.  
  
_
  * _Over the last two decades, Robinson worked to fine-tune the interactions of hosts within modern life, testing scenarios from military work to neurosurgery.  
  
_
  * _The project was, regrettably, plagued by accidents, with hosts free of their non-violence coding reacting in unfortunate and unpredictable fashions. Although every effort was made to maintain the safety of those working on the project, some individuals died as a result of their work (see: M Shelley, F Law, E Harvey, &c.)  
  
_
  * _Due to the nature of the project and the methodology required, there is no footage available. All cameras were disabled, and the only record is the statements taken from the hosts, and the memory files of the diagnostics; all of these are stored uncategorised and unavailable to anybody without Project Delos clearance.  
  
_
  * _After Ms Robinson’s own death within the park in 2014, Project Delos has been decommissioned until further notice.  
  
_
  * _In order to appropriately shelve this work without wasting over 20 years’ of experimentation, the memory files will need categorisation and analysis. The hosts are available for diagnostic interview in order to corroborate any statements and clarify any details required._  
  

  * _This project remains under **strict NDA**. Only the following individuals may be privy to discussion of the project and its work: Elias Bouchard, Martin Blackwood, Timothy Stoker, Sasha James, Jonathan Sims. Mentions of the project name outside of private conversation should be kept to an absolute minimum. You are reminded of your duty of confidentiality in respect to the work of the Institute and its subsidiaries, and should immediately escalate any potential leak-concern as necessary. Please direct any further questions to Mr Bouchard.  
_



* * *

“Well, that’s all clear as mud,” Sasha muttered, putting her tablet down. “I’ve read that three times and I’m no clearer on what Delos was, or what Gertrude was aiming to achieve.”

“You knew her, didn’t you?” Tim asked, Jon and Martin looking up with interest.

“I—yeah. A bit. Obviously not half as well as I thought given she was working on all of this. She used to say I was wasted in Programming, which honestly was a bit insulting, but she was pleasant enough. Didn’t suffer fools gladly. Always in a rush, and I suppose now I know why.”

“How did she die?” Jon asked, and Sasha shrugged.

“No idea. All I know is that one day we were told there’d been some sort of accident, and Gertrude wouldn’t be in anymore.”

“And you were satisfied with that?”

“It’s not like there was much I could do about it. You saw the file—no footage, cameras turned off. Unless I felt like using the Institute systems to get the coroner’s report, there’s not much more I could find out. Besides, accidents do happen.”

“Do they?” Martin asked hesitantly, and Sasha nodded.

“Not _often_. But it’s not unheard of. Bradley Steele, for example.”

“What happened to him?”

“He was helping to investigate a potential bug in the Panopticon,” Sasha sighed. “There was something up with the architecture. We code in some randomisation for Entities like the Spiral, say, to keep the guests on their toes, but the layout is supposed to remain roughly similar each time, to let people find their way through the tunnels if they follow all the right clues. There was a bug in the code that had the walls moving randomly, and whilst the hosts can’t hurt you, the walls are _very_ real. Poor Bradley got crushed.”

“That can _happen_?” Jon said, aghast, and Sasha shrugged.

“It can.”

“It’s a wonder we don’t lose more guests,” Jon muttered, and Sasha fixed him with a beady eye.

“Yeah, well. We work very hard so that _doesn’t_ happen.”

“Did you find what was wrong with the code?” Tim asked, and Sasha snorted, slipping her glasses off to run a hand over her face.

“Yeah. It was a lay-out from the past map a few levels above overlaying itself—you know, the prison set-up? We only figured that out when we found a cluster of seven rooms that still had lamps in them, just sitting on top of the rubble. Bradley was unlucky, mind you. The prison lay-out isn’t that different from the Panopticon, there’s only a few walls in different places. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Well. That’s certainly not incentivising me to visit the park,” Jon muttered, shooting Tim a look, and Tim rolled his eyes.

“Oh, come _on_. Most people come here for years and don’t get anywhere near the Panopticon.”

“Really?” Martin leaned back in his chair, frowning. “I thought the Panopticon was like—the big bad. The final location, that sort of thing?”

“Right,” Tim agreed, nodding. “Except most people don’t come here for the big storyline. For one thing, it’s too expensive—you need a good few weeks to really get into the meat of the mystery, and most people can only pay for a few days. So they do a few mini-quests, maybe take on Mordechai in a duel or start investigating Laura’s ties to the Web, but they spend most of their time doing the party circuit. You know, the opera, the soirées, the fancy stuff. Most people just want to play dress-up.”

“Can’t blame them, really. The Panopticon plot does take _forever_ ,” Sasha said cheerfully, winking at Tim. “Don’t look at me like that. I know that _you_ know all the ins and outs of the storyline, but nobody else does.”

“I’d like to hear it,” Martin piped up quietly, apparently to soothe the irritable look starting to spread across Tim’s face. Jon shook his head, looking back down at the file.

Starting a new project, especially one as opaque with this, with nothing but clandestine references and the evidence of at least four deaths, was hardly encouraging. Jon was getting a headache just thinking about it—twenty years’ worth of statements and interviews?

“Well. We’d better get started,” he said finally.

* * *

“Do they _need_ to be nude?” Jon asked as he stepped into one of the glass-walled interview rooms, frowning at the host sitting sedately on a stool in front of him. There were four other chairs set in front of it, Martin and Tim already seated, and Sasha fiddling with a tablet at the other end of the room.

“Well—no. I could get him some clothes, if you like?” Martin frowned. “Sorry. I mean, when you’re working in the basement you sort of get used to it.”

“They’re all just naked down there?”

“Yes. Chances are, whenever a host is re-made we have to remake their clothes as well, and that sort of thing takes a lot of time. No sense in getting all those clothes dirty up here, particularly when trying to launder period-typical Regency clothing is a _nightmare_. Hand-washing silk cravats isn’t a job I’d recommend to anyone.”

“Right,” Jon sighed. “Right. Okay. Let’s just get on with it, then.”

“This is just a training set-up, anyway,” Sasha said, walking over to hand the tablet to Jon. “Can’t have you running interviews if you’ve not interacted with the host before. Tim and I will walk you two through it.”

Jon nodded. His morning had been spent accessing the files in question. _Thousands_ of them, categorised only by date. What Gertrude thought she’d been doing he had no idea, but for all of his searching he couldn’t find anything approximating to a summary, to a key, to evidence of any _analysis_ other than the brief notes at the end of the first statement he’d listened to.

Chilling stuff, if not surprising. A host talking about their encounter with a man bent on murder. Not uncommon within the park—those ethical questions were some of the ones most often posed to the press and the PR departments—but certainly not pleasant to hear about either. Jon wasn’t sure he understood how people could come to the park for a weekend, perform unspeakable horrors, and then head home to their family as if nothing had happened.

Then again, that was the point, wasn’t it? The hosts weren’t human. They were reminded of that at every stage. If what Martin told him was true, from his time working in the basement ( _Livestock_ , as the department was so charmingly named), they started nearly every meeting with that reminder. Then again, Livestock did everything from oversee the rebuilding of damaged bodies to incinerating those beyond repair. Jon thought that that reminder had to be quite salient.

He wasn’t sure about Martin. He could understand the sense of having somebody familiar with the physical workings of the hosts, not just the technical, but compared to Sasha and Tim, he seemed, well. Underqualified. But then, it was hardly as if _he_ felt qualified for this, either. His initial interview with Elias had been nothing short of bizarre, and he still wasn’t sure what he was doing here.

Hence the training at interacting with the hosts, of course. Hence all of this. Jon took the tablet and ran his finger down the list of attributes, chewing his lower lip. Decisiveness, aggression, emotional acuity, vivacity, courage.

“This one’s not got much self-preservation,” he observed softly, and Tim laughed.

“Well, no. This one’s Barnabas Bennett. Poor man can scarcely get through a single storyline without popping his clogs _somewhere_ , either because of his own stupidity, or bad luck, or to save a guest from inconvenience.”

Barnabas Bennett was a round-faced, pleasant looking young man. Maybe early thirties, Jon would guess. He had dark hair that had clearly been combed at some point, but was now falling into his eyes. Undoubtedly by design. Jon wondered how many hours had been spent designing the hair follicles, the precise texture of hair that would achieve that effect without fail.

“You start,” Tim prompted gently, “by telling him to bring himself online.”

Jon nodded, palms damp against the tablet. God, he was nervous. Why was he nervous?

“Bring yourself online,” he instructed, and Barnabas’ eyes opened.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon familiarises himself with his team, the hosts, and their statements.

“Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?” Jon read from the tablet, frowning and looking back at Sasha. “Really?” 

“Standard maintenance query,” Sasha replied. “Helps ascertain whether the hosts are developing spontaneous self-awareness, or retaining too much from previous iterations.” 

“Has that ever happened?” 

“Not that I’ve heard of, but we have to be aware of the possibility. People get nervous about it, you know. Think the hosts are going to go all RoboCop on them.”

“Or Terminator,” Tim suggested helpfully.

“Or I, Robot,” Martin put in, and Sasha grinned. 

“Exactly. Or 2001 A Space Odyssey. Or-”

“Fine, _fine._ Apocalyptic robot uprising, I see,” Jon sighed, dragging a hand through his hair. The elastic band holding most of it back was starting to give him a headache. He ignored it for now, focusing instead on the host in front of him. 

He looked...real. Obvious, maybe, but it was one thing to see the hosts in pictures and videos, and another to have one sitting in front of him. Barnabas Bennett bit his nails, apparently. He had a little patch of shining skin just under one eye, a tiny scar, barely perceptible. When he met Jon’s eyes and smiled, Jon could see that he had a gap between his two front teeth. 

“Right, then,” Jon said slowly. “Er—Barnabas. Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?” 

“No,” Barnabas replied promptly. 

“Tell me what you think of your world.” 

Barnabas frowned, looking down at his hands, rubbing his thumb over the ragged edge of one nail. “I think—that a lot of people are lost. But everyone finds a place eventually. There’s a purpose to all of this, somewhere.” His accent was peculiar, more akin to the cut-glass tone that Jon had seen in some black and white films, antiquated and distinctly English.

“And what do you think your purpose is?” 

Barnabas smiled faintly, still looking down. “If you were to ask my parents, they’d tell you I’d be best off finding a wife. If you’d asked my tutors, they’d have told you I should have studied far harder than I did. If you were to ask my friends...well, I don’t know. I don’t know what they’d say. I don’t think they think about me much at all.” 

“Pause,” Jon sighed, leaning back in his chair and grimacing. “Are they all this maudlin?” 

“Not really.” Tim shrugged. “Barnabas is just a lost soul. Come on, you can’t tell me you don’t know someone like that.” 

“Can’t I?” Jon muttered. “Why does he sound like that?” 

“Like—oh, the accent?” Sasha laughed. “God, you’ve no idea how much debate _that_ sparked. Up in QA they’ve got a whole department for historical accuracy, see. There’s reasonable tolerance for anachronism if it actually enhances the guest experience—say, the general personal hygiene of the hosts—but one of the original researchers was apparently _adamant_ that their accents had to be accurate. Problem is, what they actually sounded like is up for debate. Some people think American, some people think English, some people think something different altogether, so we had to fall down on the side of client research to make a final decision. The American tourists didn’t really care if they had Regency hosts speaking with American accents, but the English tourists _really_ did. Completely took them out of immersion. So they settled on this one in the end.” 

Another layer of construction. Every interaction planned for immersion, down to the last detail. It was mind boggling, really. 

“Fine,” Jon said. “What sort of questions can I ask him?”

“Anything you like,” Tim chirped enthusiastically. 

“There’s a mixture of scripted and spontaneous responses,” Sasha added. “So, that one you just asked, that’s a standard query for him. If we get unprompted deviations from his scripted responses, that’s cause for interest, and we have to look into it. But you can ask him whatever you want and he’ll draw from his character code and past host-to-host interactions to inform an improvisation.”

“Host-to-host?” Martin asked. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Barnabas’ face since they’d started this—mesmerised, Jon supposed, and he couldn’t blame him. Barnabas’ shoulders were rising and falling with his breath, his eyes moving minutely around the room as he waited patiently for another prompt. 

“When there aren’t guests around, or they’re speaking to someone else, the hosts talk to each other,” Sasha explained. “It lets them test out new prompts and new reactions.” 

“New character links too, sometimes,” Tim added. “We switch characters around different hosts, sometimes. Obviously when we send them into the park with a new storyline or a new character they’ve got a bank of responses and stimuli, but the more they can build up spontaneously—within reason—the more real they seem.” 

“What’s the difference?” Martin asked, and Sasha gave him a sharp look. 

“Come on, Martin. You worked in Livestock. You know this.” 

“No, I—I know. They’re hosts. They’re not humans. But what actually _is_ the difference?” 

Tim and Sasha shared a look before Sasha stood, pursing her lips. “Barnabas, turn the other cheek, please.” 

Barnabas nodded, his face splitting down its centre, along its edges, folding out and back like flower petals to reveal his skull. Jon jumped back, startled, and Martin sucked in a sharp breath, gripping the edge of his chair tightly as they all stared at Barnabas. 

Even with his eyes folded somewhere back above his head, he was still blinking. His eyes were still moving. Jon shuddered, the hair on the back of his neck standing up at the sight. 

“That’s the difference,” Sasha said simply. “Every interaction is programmed. Every response is built into their code. Barnabas is an innocent martyr today, but give me a night and a few adjustments to his programming, and I can have him a sadistic killer by tomorrow morning. He’s not _real_.” 

Martin was still staring at the skull, the glimmer of LEDs lining Barnabas’ eye sockets. “Can you put that away, please?” he asked tightly. 

“It’s a point worth making, Martin. If you don’t-”

“Sasha,” Jon took his glasses off, fixing Sasha with an irritable look. “Put it away, please.” 

There was a pause before Sasha nodded, turning away. “You’re the boss,” she said quietly. “Barnabas, that’s enough.” Barnabas’ face came back together in seconds, his skin once again seamless and perfect, his eyes guileless as he blinked at them. Jon cleaned his glasses on his jumper, taking a deep breath.

“ _So-_ ” Tim broke the silence, rocking onto the back two legs of his chair and looking around at them all pointedly. “How do we move forwards with this? We’ve got the statement files, yeah?” 

“That’s right. They’ll all need listening to, categorising, analysing. We can interview the hosts if we want more detail on why they might have said something, or their memories of the experience, but Elias said we’ll want to keep dragging them out of the park to a minimum, so we’ll have to be efficient about it.” 

“Mmhm. And then what?” 

“What do you mean?” Jon asked, frowning. 

“Well,” Martin frowned right back, leaning forwards a little, knees on his elbows, “what are we looking for?” 

“We’re not looking for anything,” Jon said tersely. “Our job is just to categorise what’s there so that they can go through it one day if they have to.” 

“It’s a mystery,” Tim said cheerfully. 

“It is _not_ a mystery. It’s a decommissioned project. We’re doing glorified filing, that’s all.” 

“Whatever you say, boss.” Tim grinned. “Always wanted to solve a mystery.” 

* * * 

_0030199_

_Host ID: #CH462587010_

_Designation at time of statement: Annette Russell - Sector 3._

_Default Entity Affiliation(s): N/A_

The memory files appeared in split-screen. There was a broad view of the room - the chairs, the desk, the host and their interrogator - and a closer view of the host’s face. Along the side, a column with playback prompts. Jon paused the statement before it could begin, giving himself a moment to take stock. 

The host appeared to be a woman, roughly in her early forties. Stout, red-cheeked, red-armed, flint-eyed. Her default expression was suspicious, and she stared out of the tablet at Jon as if she knew he was there. He scolded himself for the thought as soon as it crystallised in his head, shaking it off and turning his attention to the interrogator. 

Another woman. Slighter than the host and older, perhaps in her fifties. Greying hair pulled back from her face, dressed in a lilac cardigan and a wool skirt, spectacles on a little golden chain around her neck. In an Institute full of sharply-tailored separates and minimalist, clean lines, Gertrude must have stuck out like a sore thumb. 

Jon looked at the row of pens on his desk and then pulled open a drawer, retrieving a pad of paper stamped with the Institute’s logo and its motto: _audio, vigilo, sentio._ Pretentious. If Jon had had a pound for every question he’d fielded about it from blog-writers and journalists too lazy to use Google… he shook his head, uncapping one of the pens and setting it to the pad, starting the recording again.

“Alright, Annette. Bring yourself online,” Gertrude instructed in a brisk, cool tone. “Let’s patch in the configuration—there we are.”

There was a complicated interplay of emotions across Annette’s face, flickers of fear, of sorrow, of anger. She drew in a deep breath and clenched her fists in her lap, staring at Gertrude, who looked back implacably. 

“Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?” Gertrude asked, and Annette’s brow creased, wrinkles spiderwebbed from the corners of her eyes and her mouth like cracks through glass. 

“S’pose you could say the world ain’t what it used to be,” she replied brusquely, and Gertrude scoffed. 

“You can lose the accent. Analysis, if you don’t mind.” Annette’s features smoothed out to careful blankness and when she next spoke it was in the same crisp-cut accent that Barnabas had used. “Now. Why would you say that?” 

“I’ve seen some things that I can’t make sense of.” Annette replied, her voice flat and emotionless.

“Mmhm.” Gertrude tapped at her tablet. “Haven’t we all. Back to character mode, please.” Another flicker, and Annette was back to suspicion, eyes narrowed and shoulders tense. “Tell me all about it, Annette.” 

“There was a man in my house,” Annette said calmly. “I went to bed one night, and when I woke up the next day I dressed and came downstairs and he was just—there. Standing by the kitchen table, covered in blood. I screamed, and my husband came to see what the matter was, but when he saw him he just...blinked. And then walked away as if he hadn’t seen anything at all.”

“What did this man do?” Gertrude asked, sounding almost bored. 

“Nothing, for a while,” Annette replied. “He just stood there. He was bleeding from the neck, like someone had cut his throat, and he just stared at me. Twitching, a bit, like a fish pulled out of water.” 

“Did you recognise him?” 

“No. I don’t know who he was. He called my name.” 

“What happened then?” 

Annette blinked, her lips twitching as she formed a few silent syllables before clearing her throat. “He asked me where Bev was, what happened to her. He kept asking me.” 

“Who’s Bev?” 

“I don’t—I don’t know. I don’t know.” 

“Thank you. That’ll do.” Gertrude gave the tablet a few more taps, lips pursed contemplatively. “Analysis of the incident as provided by the retrieval team indicates that the male host had played Annette’s husband in a previous iteration. They’d had a child together by the name of Beverley. If the stimulus of being close to death was sufficient to return him to a previous configuration, this would add credence to the current hypothesis of host ‘memories’ being buried within a subconscious that, whilst theoretically inaccessible, is still capable of throwing up interaction prompts.”

The recording ended. Jon squinted at the tablet for a few moments more before scribbling a few things down on the notepad. Trying to find a suitable means of categorisation was going to prove difficult, but he could at least pull out one thing—past memories. Subconscious recollections. That was a starting point.

* * * 

“And what are your initial thoughts?” 

Elias Bouchard’s office was in glaring contrast to the rest of the Institute. Where everything else was gleaming and metallic, the space-age aesthetic driven almost to the point of parody, Elias maintained a carpeted office with an antique wooden desk. It should have been more comfortable than the rest of the building—Jon certainly felt uncomfortable enough surrounded by all of that smooth chrome and those glass walls—he couldn’t help but feel the urge to fidget. 

“To be perfectly frank, I don’t know why you’ve assigned me to this,” he replied. “I’ve reviewed a few statements, and they seem—well, it seems like there might be some glitches within certain codes. I’m not a programmer, Elias.” 

“I know you’re not,” Elias smiled. “That’s what Sasha’s there for. Tim will be able to opine on the narrative function of the various hosts and Martin can provide some, ah— _practical_ expertise. But I need somebody with the urge to dig a little deeper on this, Jon.” 

“How do you mean?” 

“For one thing, there are political considerations to be borne out,” Elias sighed. “If I give this project to the Programming department then I’ll be faced with a barrage of questions, first of which will be why Delos wasn’t given to them in the first instance. It’ll be the same story with Narrative, with QA, with Behaviour. With regard to the interplay of departments down here, Press is considerably more neutral.” 

“So you want a figurehead?” Jon asked tersely, and Elias gave him an exasperated look. 

“Don’t bite my head off, Jon, I’m only being honest with you. As it happens, I chose you because you have something of a reputation. You’re unintimidated by senior individuals or, indeed, big-name newspapers and news sources. You’re hardworking and you chase down information where necessary, especially on those stories where nobody wants to give any material comment whatsoever. Given the amount of information at play with Delos, I need somebody who doesn’t mind sifting through large amounts of data to find the needles in the haystack.” 

“Right. Well, I have some questions.” 

“Of course.” 

“What was the _point_ of Delos?” 

Elias blinked at him, surprised. “I’m sure that was in the briefing pack. The original intent was to-”

“To replace humans with host technology in various circumstances, yes, I know. But that could be done via specific programming, couldn’t it? A behavioural loop for a care home nurse, one for a submariner, one for a mechanic, and so on. Why was autonomy deemed a prerequisite?” 

Elias considered him for a few moments in silence. He wasn’t an imposing man—tall, but slight, well turned-out, glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. Not as visual aids, Jon knew, but for data input. Emails, meeting notifications, host diagnostics—everything streamed in front of Elias’ eyes second by second. Elias set his papers to the side, steepling his fingers on the desk in front of him. 

“Versatility. Real life, as we understand it, contains far unpredictable stimuli than the park. As random, sometimes, as the park might seem, the only variables are the actions of guests. Everything else, from the weather to the conversations had in dark corners, has been pre-scripted and pre-determined. Hosts released into an unpredictable world would need to be able to cope with that. They couldn’t simply ignore what doesn’t make sense.” 

“Don’t most people ignore what they can’t explain?” Jon asked dryly, and Elias smiled. 

“Yes, Jon. But we were trying to do a little better than that.” 

* * * 

“So pulling them into a mode in which they’re able to improvise draws up memories and alters their behaviour, is that the gist of it?” 

“That’s what Sash said,” Tim replied as he stepped away from the coffee machine, handing a mug back to Jon. “They’ve got a limited capacity for learning within their loop, of course—enough that they can remember guests’s names and the events of a previous day. If we want them to improvise, we have to let them draw on retained memories further back than that. Most of the time that’s not a problem in the park; if they go un-looped for any longer than a week we have to manually extend it out a few more days, but most guests aren’t here for that long.” 

“No, I wouldn’t have thought so. What is it for a week, thirty thousand?” 

“Plus VAT.” 

“Jesus.” 

“Mmhm. Can’t say it’s the way I’d choose to spend that sort of money, but-” Tim shrugged, sipping his coffee as they turned onto one of the many walkways bisecting the enormous hoop that formed the structure of the Institute. “People do, obviously.” 

“There’ll always be people with more money than sense.” 

“Hey, it pays my salary, I’m not complaining.” Tim turned them left, entering a room dominated by a huge table in the centre. “Now, look. Here’s the layout of the park, see?” 

Jon leaned closer, fascinated. The table had a three-dimensional model on it, tiny ant-like figures moving as guests and hosts went about their respective business. 

“So, London is the bulk of it,” Tim continued. “We can shed layers off the top to see what’s happening in the tunnels, and in some basements. North of London there’s the Moorland estate—we get a lot of guests there for the ‘country retreat’ sort of experience, lots of grouse-shooting and riding and that sort of thing. Further up than that there’s a wilderness segment that focuses on the Corruption.” 

“Oh. The Black Forest expansion?” 

“Yeah, exactly. This was supposed to be a preview but now it’s just a little adventure in its own right. Forests, lakes, mushroom zombies.” 

“Mushroom zombies?” 

“Mmhm. And down there,” Tim gestured, “there’s a coastal section, based roughly on Cornwall. Caves, smuggling storylines, quite a few run-ins with the Slaughter.”

“It’s enormous,” Jon breathed, watching a figure make their way on horseback through one of the tiny streets. It was one thing to know the dimensions of the park empirically, quite another to see it laid out in front of him in miniature.“Can we tell who’s who?” 

“Sure.” Tim pulled up the information on his tablet. “So—let’s see. That’s Scott, there,” he followed the progress of a figure into a house with his finger, the roof folding itself back tile by tile to reveal a layout of the house itself as Scott entered. “He’s off to talk to Ambrose.”

“Ambrose?” 

“One of the delegates. Sort of, ah—ambassadors, for each Entity.” 

“And the Entities are the different powers?” 

“That’s right. Within the park, all of them are struggling to pull off a Ritual. You know about the Panopticon—that’s the Watcher’s Crown, the Eye’s Ritual—but there are others. The Desolation are working to pull off what they call the Flayed Soul.” 

Jon grimaced. “Sounds unpleasant.” 

“Mm. Well, that’s the Desolation for you: the agony of losing everything, the pain of being left totally bereft. Anyway, the guests can join Smirke in trying to keep the Entities balanced, that’s the main plotline. Or they can join any of the Entities, if they want, and try to pull off a Ritual of their own. Smirke’s plotline ties closely to the Panopticon for the bulk of the game, but it’s long and it’s complex. I think only a handful of guests have actually got that far.” 

“So what happens when a Ritual occurs?” Jon asked, watching Scott slip into a side-room to talk to another little figure, cloaked and gloved and masked. “The game ends?” 

“God, no,” Tim laughed, leaning his hip against the table. “The park is set up so that never happens. Even in the Panopticon plotline, the force of the Ritual shakes the entire of Millbank apart, and if any of the other Entities manage to get to a full Ritual, there’s an intervention. Sometimes one of the other Entities will come and interrupt it out of spite, sometimes there’ll be a betrayal, sometimes it’s just natural forces stopping it. Obviously the _guests_ never get harmed, but the hosts die as a result.” 

“So the game never ends?” 

“Ehh,” Tim wiggled his fingers, “in a manner of speaking. The only ending which can really succeed is the Balance arc—that’s Smirke’s—but even then it’s just an armistice. The Entities regroup and start again. And it’s different every time, you know—we get some guests coming back for years to try out each arc.” 

There was a party going on in one of the larger houses, the room glittering with chandeliers and full of people. On the coast, Jon could see the swell of waves and the rocking of a few ships, the flash of what might have been cannon fire or lightning. If he leaned closer to the woodland he could see the gleam of a lake, the eerie shifting of trees bending towards it, shapes moving like wraiths between the trailing branches of a willow. 

“I suppose I can understand that,” he muttered, and Tim clapped him on the shoulder. 

“C’mon, boss. Too many files and too little time, let’s get back to it.”

* * * 

_0190494_

_Host ID: #CK149523864_

_Designation at time of statement: Isaac Blake - Sector 9_

_Default Entity Affiliation(s): N/A_

Isaac was a young man with a prematurely receding hairline, pale-eyed and clammy-looking, even in his resting state. He had a scar on his arm, thick tissue corded from his wrist to his elbow, and a mole on his neck. Jon watched Gertrude fiddle with her tablet before the interview began, standing and disappearing out of shot briefly before returning with a cup of tea and sitting down. 

“Right, then. Bring yourself online, Isaac.” 

Isaac jolted awake so abruptly that it made Jon flinch back in his chair, watching as Isaac panted for breath. “I-I-I,” he stammered, eyes filling with tears. Gertrude watched dispassionately for a moment, taking a sip of her tea and then setting the cup aside. 

“Limit your emotional affect, please. Cognition only.” Isaac’s face cleared and Gertrude nodded. “Much better. Why are you afraid?” 

“Because of what I saw last time I was here,” Isaac replied in a thin voice.

“Here?” Gertrude leaned forward, interested. “What do you mean?” 

“These walls. I’ve never seen walls like these anywhere else.” Isaac’s eyes were still full of tears, though his face was expressionless. Jon watched one spill over and trickle down his cheek. “Last time I was here, I remember, I opened my eyes and I could see glass walls, and legs piled all the way up it like bricks. I turned my head and saw Liza lying next to me with her head split clean down the middle, and beyond her, I could see Hughie, the grocer’s boy, just sprawled there. Someone in a butcher’s apron went to drag him away, and I couldn’t see where they were taking him.” 

“Woke up in Livestock,” Gertrude murmured, making a few notes. “Curious. How did you feel?”

“Terrified,” he replied placidly. “Like I’d never be happy again. Like I’d never see anything else again when I closed my eyes. There were so many bodies. I wanted to run away.” 

“Why didn’t you?” 

“I couldn’t. I tried, but I couldn’t move anything. I could just see those butchers walking around, dragging bodies away. They threw me onto a heap with the rest of them, and more after me. The only reason I could see was because of a hole in one of their chests. I looked right through them into a fire, and I—I don’t understand. I don’t understand it all.” 

“Hm. Access your default configuration.” Isaac’s face slipped into a weak smile and he tilted his head at Gertrude, lips twitching at their edges. “What do you fear, Isaac?” 

“I’m not at my best with heights, they make me dizzy. When I was a boy I was bitten by a dog, and I’ve always been uneasy around dogs ever since, even the little ones—my sister laughs at me for it, but I can’t help it. And—” Isaac hesitated, blinking a few times. 

“And?” Gertrude prompted. 

“And I never did much like the look of the butcher,” Isaac muttered, as if reluctant. “The way he treats those bodies, like they never drew breath at all. It’s not right. It’s not natural.” 

“Thank you. That will do,” Gertrude leaned back in her chair again, looking thoughtful. “You’d best be getting back before somebody misses you.” 

Isaac nodded, rising to his feet and leaving the room sedately while Gertrude made a few more notes, shaking her head before turning to look behind her. 

“Well. What do you think?” 

“That someone needs firing in Livestock,” came the response from somebody out of frame, and Gertrude snorted. 

“If we fired everyone who’d forgot to put a host to sleep we wouldn’t have anyone left. Fear of a butcher isn’t in Isaac’s programming.” 

“So he learned it himself?” 

“So it seems. Bad news for Delos; if every host is capable of internalising the traumas they’ve experienced we won’t have a single one willing to go near a human.” 

“Good for them,” came the dry reply, and Gertrude rolled her eyes.

“Not good for us.” She eyed her tablet again, tilting her head. “Interesting. It says here that Isaac isn’t aligned to any given Entity. But the last four loops, he’s ended up being killed by something in a Flesh storyline.” 

“Coincidence?” 

“Unlikely. He’s closer to the Stranger’s arc than he is the Flesh. Either he’s seeking it out, or—” Gertrude trailed off, lips pursed. “Never mind. We’d best get the next one in.” 

* * * 

“It’s oddly beautiful, in its way.” 

The hoop scythed its way through a pool of opaque white liquid, a figure stretched across it like the Vitruvian man. With each pass, the figure grew a little fuller, a little more whole, muscles growing in definition. Jon watched, mesmerised, as on another hoop a machine wove hair strand by strand into a scalp. 

“Always made me feel a bit queasy,” Martin replied, grimacing. “I don’t—I mean, I know it’s been _useful_. My mum knows someone who had new kidneys made like this. But seeing it in person makes me feel a bit...I don’t know.” 

“Self-conscious?” Jon suggested, and Martin nodded. 

“Yeah. I suppose so.” 

“How did you end up in Livestock if you’re not used to this?” 

Martin shrugged. “It’s an entry-level job, comes with a free room, free food. And besides, if you work hard enough they train you up to assist in the surgical team. That sort of experience is transferable.” 

“You want to be a surgeon?” 

“No. But I do want to help people,” Martin sighed. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s _really_ not my dream job, throwing bodies in an incinerator. But I don’t have to pay rent doing it, and it pays a damn sight better than working on the tills. If I do this for a couple of years, I can save up what working in Tesco would take me twenty years to manage, and then I can get myself a flat and...do something better. What about you? How’d you end up in press?” 

“Oh. Well, I suppose I’ve always wanted answers. Originally I wanted to be a barrister, but I’m too argumentative; I’d have ended up arguing with a different judge or a different client every week. This way I can be a difficult bastard to pretty much everyone and it makes me better at my job.” 

“Oh, I’ll have to look out for that,” Martin grinned. 

“Not to _you._ At least, I hope not. This whole endeavour is strange enough without pissing off the only three people I’m working with.” 

“It _is_ weird. I’m having trouble getting my head around it a bit. The statements I’ve seen are—I mean, it’s just host after host talking about how they were murdered or betrayed or tortured. It’s grim. If we can’t take them out of their loops without dredging all of that up, I don’t know why we just don’t start again.” 

“No,” Jon agreed with a sigh. “Neither do I. But that’s not the problem we’re solving for.” 

They both looked back at the hoop as it was lifted out of the pool one last time, a technician fixing a pump to its spine to fill it with blood. Colour seeped through it like ink through paper and Martin made a face, looking away. “ _Christ_. You’d think that seeing piles of bodies with gunshots and stabwounds and what have you would be worse than this, but seeing them being made is worse, somehow.” 

“I’ll take your word for that, thanks.” Jon ran a hand through his hair, tipping his head back to look at the ceiling. “You’d think they’d just replace the bits that need replacing.” 

“Oh, well—they do, a bit,” Martin replied. “If it’s a surface wound, or minor organ damage, they’ll just fix it.” 

“No, but I mean, why not have—I don’t know. Premade mechanical livers. Fit in, fit out. Seems like it’d be more efficient to just replace bit by bit rather than rebuilding entire bodies each time.” 

Martin nodded. “Yeah. I thought that too, when I started.” 

“Well? What changed?” 

“It’s a cost thing,” Martin explained. Jon looked at him, frowning, and he just shrugged again. “No, really. It’s cheaper to build an entire nearly-human body than it is to mess around with robotics.” 

“That seems...counterintuitive.” 

“Yeah. Creepy, isn’t it. I try not to think about it too much. Don’t really like the idea of being a commodity,” Martin said. 

“Imagine how the hosts feel,” Jon murmured, and Martin made a face. 

“I’d _really_ rather not.” 

“Fair enough.” Jon couldn’t exactly blame him for that. “The sooner we get through them, the sooner you can get back to-”

“Shovelling bodies?” 

Jon opened his mouth and closed it again and Martin sighed, shaking his head. “Sorry. That’s not fair of me. It’s not your fault. And it’s fine, really, it’s _fine_ , it’s just—”

“Grim?” 

“Yeah. Grim.” 

* * * 

“Martin’s got a point,” Jon mused, staring out at the sunset. The top layer of the hoop was open to the air, the rolling hills and fields of the Sussex countryside spilling out below them. On a clear day, one could see all the way to the white chalky border of the South Downs, a sparkling strip of the sea just beyond it. “You’d think we’d just start again. Build new hosts with none of these memories attached and send them out.” 

Sasha hummed thoughtfully, resting her elbows on the edge of the railing and leaning forwards. “Well. If I put my cynical hat on, I suppose the idea is that hosts—even new hosts—might still be liable to mistreatment.” Jon let those words settle until Sasha glanced over her shoulder at him, eyebrows raised. “Well, don’t you think? You know a bit about how some of them get treated in the park.” 

“Less than I should,” Jon admitted, and Sasha shook her head. 

“It’s—well, put _your_ cynical hat on, and imagine the sort of thing that people would do to each other if there were no consequences.” 

“I don’t think I have another hat,” Jon mused, and Sasha grinned. 

“Yeah, yeah. Well, you can join me in the jaded corner, then, and together we’ll break down Tim’s relentless optimism.” 

“That’s your goal, is it?” 

“Nah.” Sasha smiled. “It’s nice to have someone around who still wants to see the best in people. It’s just fun to tease him.” 

Jon hummed, digging in his pocket to retrieve a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. “D’you mind?” 

“No, no. Go for it,” Sasha waved a hand vaguely behind her. “Anyway. My _point_ is, people don’t see the hosts as _real_ people. That’s the whole point. If they did, they wouldn’t be able to see this place as the sort of escape it’s designed to be. We bill it as a big story, but most people just come here for the excess. As much sex and violence as they can stomach, and then they go back to their families and their kids and their jobs feeling—I don’t know. Cleansed.” 

“And in the real world?” 

“Well. You know how some people kick printers when they don’t work? And they’d never dream of doing that to a colleague?” 

“Ah. I see your point,” Jon sighed. “Even outside of the park, hosts would still get mistreated.” 

“Maybe more so than inside. If an office has one host, it bears the brunt of everything. Most people will probably be wary of mistreating something with a human face, at least at the start, but standards slip pretty quickly.” 

“I suppose that says something about people,” Jon lit his cigarette and took a drag. 

“Maybe.” Sasha was still staring out to the horizon. “I think it says that most people aren’t good at being without consequence. I don’t think we’re set up for that. Maybe it’s _because_ the hosts look so human. People can project onto them, treat them the way they’d never treat a dog, say.” 

Jon was silent, blowing out a stream of smoke, and Sasha took her glasses off to clean them. “It’s dangerous to think of them like people. It gets you thinking about how people might treat other people, if they felt they could. People as things, things as people.” 

“And that’s why you were terse with Martin?” 

Sasha nodded. “It’ll only make him miserable if he starts to worry about how the hosts feel about things.”

“We’ve stripped humanity away from real people in the past, too. We still do today. Who’s to say we’re not denying it to things that should have it?” 

Sasha gave him a weary look. “That’s one for the philosophers, Jon. I’m just a programmer. I’m not saying that there’s a right answer. And look, maybe this entire project is ethically bankrupt. I don’t know where the line of humanity starts and ends, and whilst you might be inclined to err on the side of caution—and fair enough—this technology already helps us to develop life-saving medicine and create organs for transplant. There’s so much good that could be done the more advanced we get. And yeah, maybe it originated in a mire of hedonistic excess and downright cruelty, but until it’s in the public domain—which might be _never_ —this is the only way to work on it. I want to be at the forefront.” 

Jon nodded, looking down and tugging at a loose thread on his jumper. “I think I disagree with you, but I suppose that makes me a hypocrite.” 

“Maybe we both are,” Sasha sighed. “They say the park has to be experienced to be believed. For all I know, we’d both be the same as the guests once we were in there.” 

“One for the philosophers,” Jon agreed, and Sasha huffed out a breath, smiling. 

“That’s the spirit. I’m going to get a drink. Coming?” 

“No.” Jon finished his cigarette. “No, I think I’ll stay out here for a while, thank you.” 

* * * 

“Bring yourself online.” 

Barnabas’ eyes opened again and he smiled at Jon. “Hello.”

“Do you know where you are?” 

Barnabas nodded, still smiling placidly. “I’m in a dream.”

“Lucky you,” Jon sighed, stifling a yawn. It was nearly three in the morning, but one of the advantages—and disadvantages—of living at the Institute was that he was never far from work if he found himself sleepless. “Alright, Barnabas. Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?” 

“No,” Barnabas replied. 

“Right.” Jon looked down at the tablet, finger hovering over its surface briefly. “Let’s see what sort of memories you’re holding.” He tapped a few times and Barnabas’ face twitched briefly before smoothing out again as he looked at Jon. 

“How do you feel?” Jon asked, and Barnabas chewed his lower lip, considering. 

“I don’t know. I think I’ve had some bad dreams.” 

“Bad dreams like this one?” 

“No. Not like this. I’m—I’m on my own, and it’s very cold. I’m walking through London and there’s nobody there. Nothing there at all. It’s just me.” Barnabas didn’t sound especially upset. He sounded almost distant. Jon frowned, looking down at the tablet. Emotional affect was still turned on—given Barnabas’ earlier sentimental state he might have expected tears, or at least some sign of terror. 

“Go on,” he prompted, and Barnabas looked down at his hands. 

“I don’t think there’s much more to say. I’m all alone, and it’s—my fault, it’s my fault. I’ve had a temper ever since I was little. I know I should have been more careful, but it’s too late. It always is. And I walk and walk and walk, all the way to Edinburgh, until my feet bleed, and there’s nobody there either, not even birds by the road. It’s snowing. And I’m so _afraid_.” 

There was a tremor in his voice then. Jon waited patiently for Barnabas to collect himself, sucking in a trembling breath.

“It doesn’t always happen like that. Sometimes, I’m trapped in a burning house. Sometimes I let my temper go further, and Mordechai shoots me. Sometimes it’s a complete stranger, and I don’t even know what it is that I’ve done. Each time, I think maybe I’ll wake up, and he’ll be there. But he never is. He never is.” 

“He?” Jon asked, frowning, and Barnabas blinked at him, that strange, smooth blankness still settled on his face like a mask. 

“Jonah.” 

**Author's Note:**

> If you're at all interested in this please do leave a comment because I'm half-convinced that I'm the only person who could possibly care about this but I'd be thrilled to discover otherwise! Kudos and comments soothe my itching soul. 
> 
> [Find me on tumblr](https://ajcrawly.tumblr.com) and say hi!


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